In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron proclaimed that “you will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out,” because the “revolution will not be televised..it will be live.”

A song that is more a poem and political declaration than a piece of music, “the Revolution will not be Televised” was written in the middle of the Nixon era – as the war in Vietnam, a conflict with a disproportionate number of African-Americans fighting, still raged – and the counterculture of the 1960s had either burnt out or faded away.

It weaves together popular culture, civil rights, and the rumblings going on in the underground…and makes a statement for an entire generation.